 Well, it's that time of year when I'm very busy in the conservatory planting lots of seeds and One of the tools that I found very useful for me in this process is biodynamics. Now biodynamics Has a lot of stuff going on around it. It's rooted in Steiner's work from 100 odd years ago and Some of the language can be quite interesting and there's a straight few strange recipes in there now I first came across it when I was teaching in Sweden and I went to teach a course permaculture course in conjunction with some nature awareness and the person who was living there taught the nature awareness bit I taught the permaculture bit and Essentially, there was a big wooden barn that was our space and there was no refrigeration in it so all the food came in and it sat around for a few days and then eventually we would eat it and One of the I remember one day we looked at this lettuce, which was about five days old and Picked it up and said look this looks like it's still in the ground. It looked absolutely amazing It was so such an amazing lettuce We had a picture taken of us with this lettuce in between It had not been in the fridge or anything but five days after it had been Delivered, let alone who knows when cut. It just looked this vibrant thing that you would love to eat So I thought well, definitely worth investigating it. Other people have come to me and said biodynamics Yeah, that's really interesting So I thought I started playing with it But I'm playing with it on a very basic level because there's a vegan quite a lot of the recipes Are a little bit strange involved, you know pigs gulls stuff with this flower head and such But there's there's a calendar a bio dynamic calendar and I very much use that so If you want to investigate some more so it comes from Maria toons bio-dynamic calendar So that's been going for quite a long time and here is the calendar and There's based on a bunch of things to do with the heavens and so on and There's also to do with the moon. I'm not going to go into the fine details This is just about why it works for me. So essentially what you have is four main categories Which you might put your seeds and based upon what is it you're wanting? So you have your roots your flowers your fruits and your leaves and On a given day, it will tell you which of those things to be planting or transplanting or doing things to And sometimes there's a big gray bar saying don't do anything because it would be really bad Now I still don't know it's early days for me I've done this for a year and since my second season it's early days to say does it make a difference and because we're growing food for ourselves I don't really have space for me to be experimenting and seeing well Does that grow better than this other one that I planted on a different day? I don't know the bit that does work for me is The organizational bit so what I've ended up doing is I've sorted my seeds into the different categories depending on what they are So firstly it makes seeds easier to manage. So what have we got at the front here? I probably haven't sorted this out yet. That's my Garden diary, so that's leaves. Okay, so Go to the back, which brings us to this fruit. Okay, that goes to the back Roots, okay, so today we're on roots So roots is in the front That's followed by flowers leaves and then fruits. Okay, so the way I remember it is If you start with then something begins with F. So flowers so flowers F L L is for leaf so flowers are followed by leaves Which is then followed by the other F, which is fruits, which is followed by FR roots Okay, so even if they get mixed up. I know where I'm supposed to be so in the front here. I have My roots, so parsnips Is right at the front because this is why I'm doing this month But I need to change this because it's just gone into May and then I have a card there So it's next month and beyond so if it's not this month that goes behind So every month I go through these which I will do in a moment and sort out. What is it? I'm sewing this month. So it's that it's really easy and then I can see well I've got to do this month and get on with it Now the bit that really works for me Is that if I look at the calendar the sewing calendar and it says okay You've got to sew this by five o'clock this evening or you got to wait for another nine days. I think Well, normally I couldn't be bothered but I'm not going to wait another nine days, so I'm going to do it now So I found it to be a really good motivational tool And I'm yet to see How much of a difference it makes to the planting but I do still remember that Biodynamic lettuce